Should OSU pitcher be allowed to play?
CORVALLIS, Ore. — Luke Heimlich, one of the best pitchers in college baseball, and certainly its most controversial, strode to the mound and lined up for his first pitch.
The home crowd of nearly 3,000, most in orange and black, the colors of Oregon State, cheered, “Luke! Luke! Luke!” The fans wanted a victory against Arizona State.
More than that, they wanted a performance that would hark back to a different time — the time before anyone had heard that Heimlich, 22, had pleaded guilty to a felony: sexually molesting his 6-year-old niece when he was 15.
Otherwise, this game seemed completely normal. But, given his past, the question remained: Why was Heimlich even on the mound?
He will pitch for the fourthranked Beavers (35-7-1, 14-6-1 Pac-12) against No. 2 Stanford (37-6, 17-4) in a three-game series in Corvallis this weekend.
In a series of interviews with the New York Times last weekend, Heimlich flatly denied committing the crime he had
admitted to, saying he pleaded guilty to quickly dispense with the case and for the sake of family relations.
“Nothing ever happened,” he said, when asked for specifics about what might have occurred between him and his niece.
His denial is not likely to stop the questions that surround the Oregon State team. Not just about innocence or guilt, but when, exactly, should one be forgiven for a crime? And what about the victim? How does her enduring anguish figure into his quest for redemption?
In June, when the Oregonian first reported Heimlich’s guilty plea, it said he originally had faced two charges stemming from incidents between 2009 and 2011. The victim is the daughter of one of Heimlich’s older brothers.
According to court records, the newspaper said, she told investigators she was in Heimlich’s bedroom at his home south of Seattle when he pulled her underwear down and “touched her on both the inside and outside.” The Oregonian quoted the documents as saying, “She told him to stop, but he wouldn’t.”
As part of a plea deal, reached when Heimlich was 16, one of the charges was dropped and he was placed on two years’ probation, took court-ordered classes and had to register for five years as a Level 1 sex offender, a designation the state of Washington uses for someone considered of low risk to the community and unlikely to become a repeat offender.
Heimlich’s case might not have been made public if not for the fact that, years later, he failed to update his whereabouts for a state registry of sex offenders, which led to a police citation, which, in turn, tipped reporters to his case.